Merry Episodic Echo: Boxcutters picks of 2010

In this, the Grand Final of Boxcutters episodes for 2010, all the players are in to give 110% in the name of the TV game.

Geraldine Hickey joins us with her special comments on her selection of the best show of 2010 and like a fantastic meeting of all the Big Chiefs, we have drawn in Josh Kinal, Brett Cropley, Nelly Thomas and John Richards for a pants-down, bare-knuckle brawl on momentous developments in Australian TV, the crap that should never have happened and the best show and our favourite characters of this, the first year of the second decade of the second millennium. Or is that the final year of the first decade of the new millenuim? Either way, it’s a BIG FREAKING CALL but we like to call it our Merry Episodic Echo – part 5 in our occasional annual wrapups.

We’ve put our picks out there so now it’s up to you to get busy in the comments to let us know who is right and what we completely missed that you were barraking for.

The comments are below – listen through the links up here:

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15 Comments

Completely out of context, however now that the episodes in question have aired on free-to-air (give or take an hour), I thought I’d clarify some of the “Survivor” spoilers I alluded to a couple of weeks back – for Nelly’s peace of mind, if nothing else. If you only watched the main show (and not the you-tube extras or clicked-through linked forum spoilers), you may not understand why ‘crazy-wacky-Jane’ reacted so savagely towards her alliance booting her for no obvious reason. Well, no ‘obvious reason’ except for her clearly being mad as a cut snake, of course. After watching the reunion show, she’s still majorly PISSED OFF. But in any case – “here’s what you didn’t know”:

OFF-screen, this series’ pissweak villain – Sash – attempted to (it is alleged) bribe Jane with paying off her mortgage with the winnings if she continued to support him and talk him up at the post-game hotel (aka ‘Ponderosa’) to the other jurors after she was eliminated. All of this came out at tribal council, hence Jeff calling for “turn the cameras off, get the producers in here now-!”. Serious discussion by the producers was given to disqualifying and booting Sash – especially when (again, allegedly) Kelly Purple claimed he’d made a similar financial bribe offer to her before she quit, which tipped her over the edge towards doing it (quitting). Since it was considered a he said/she said/she also said incident, Sash was allowed to continue. However the rest of the players/ jurors believed Jane & Kelly’s version of events, and felt Sash’s tactics were unfair – which is why Sash got no votes at the end; the remaining jurors basically agreed to ban Sash from consideration amongst themselves. None of this made it to air, (not surprising; a season with two quitters is bad enough, add a disqualification of one of the final three and well – suddenly Fabio’s ‘win-by-default’ over Chase is far less inexplicable)

To go back to our original discussion – if you knew about it beforehand, or just re-watch the last couple of episodes with hindsight knowledge – you can see some fairly savage edits where Jane especially starts to tee off and talk about it, before Jeff cuts her off.

Also – bearing in mind that the final show is LIVE, whereas the votes were cast about 3months previous (before the first episode airs); watch Jud/Fabio’s face as the votes are read – all the votes are cast, all the production team know who has won – and have known for weeks; all the spoilers are online – and then there’s a 4-4 tie with Fabio and Chase. Had he read the online spoilers and was expecting to win?! Watch his face – you decide…

But you can now see what I meant about how spoilers can sometimes make a mediocre show way more interesting and engrossing… whether that’s “fair” in considering how objectively “good” a show is, well – that’s a much more complicated topic. And of course – YMMV (you mileage may vary…)

@Mordwa Thanks for the clarification. I watched the finale last night and thought “what the hell was Mordwa talking about?” Your explanation makes heaps of sense – I was wondering why there was so much animosity to Sash as the reasons for it weren’t evident from what made it into the show.

John, congratulations on getting your show in the
(rectangular with magnetic platters in it) can. But what the hell
is “Spaced”? Things we have learned this year from Boxcutters: 1.
Crack is a hell of a drug. You don’t even remember what you did the
previous time you smoked it. 2. Never rap on a bet.

Mordwa, thank you so much! Now it all makes sense! I was at a complete loss as to why everyone HATED Sash so much. I didn’t care for him, but it was a bit OTT. Now it makes sense.

I still think Jane is a complete lunatic though. She reminds me of many country folk I grew up with – they bang on about community and support and sticking together, but it’s only good as long as you do what they say. They cut you loose the minute you think and act for yourself. “He better not show his face in North Carolina”… groan. I am still completely flabergasted as to how she got the audience vote.

– Jeff making it clear that the idiot who ‘accused’ Sash of being gay was in fact just an idiot

– Rupert STILL wearing tie-dye

I gotta say, I’m surprised at myself, but I was thrilled with Fabio’s win – he totally won me over. I don’t think he’s any Einstein, but he had them and the situation pegged for sure. Good on him. It was also refreshing to hear someone say that they were just going to “have fun” with the money – I’m a bit sick of them all being earnest.

John, I’d be interested to hear what it was about this series of Doctor Who that made it the first you’ve enjoyed since the return of the series (I guess my main questions is why you saw it as being so different). I feel that it was much more similar to “new series 1-4” than to the original series, but I’ve enjoyed all of the series so far (though this year’s finale left me quite disappointed on some levels).

Murray- I’m not going to answer for John, that’s rude and possibly blasphemous to some religions.. 😉
However, one of the things that I noticed was that there was So. Much. Less. Angst! And the truly sad stuff did not come out of “I looooooove yooooou, why wont you loooove meeeeeeeee?” or “I left poorly acted cockney girl in another universe!” (I think she’s cockney. But I’m sure someone will correct me.)And thanks be to god, cause that was getting really old.

The other thing I noticed was that this series treated the audience like adults, capable of understanding and empathizing, and was also quite dark and twisted at some points.
The ep with the Dream Lord was a good example, and was additionally kinda terrifying.
All in all, it was a very good series, and a marked change from the last few.

(side note: I started watching NuWho around Series 2, but have since discovered that a station here is playing the old stuff around 1:45, and it’s awesome, and I think I scarred my impressionable household youfs for life. And I have a l i t t l e t i n y girlcrush on Tom Baker. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.)

Hi all – generally great podcast you put together, but gee,
I really thought you dropped the ball this week. I haven’t listened
to the whole Echo podcast yet, so apologies if I missed something
relevant to this, but thought I’d weigh in on the ‘Rake’
discussion, with a suggestion: why not WTFS (Watch The Fucking
Show) before pontificating about it? (Granted Josh has watched some
of it, but seems to have seen a different show than I did. In the
series I saw, the older woman/schoolkid thing wasn’t treated
lightly at all: it wrecked the lad’s life & it wrecked the
father’s relationship with his son. Sure, there were jokes around
the situation, but the show is a ‘dramedy’. There was also a
resolution to report the whole thing to authority, but they meant
calling the teacher’s new school, rather than the police, which you
may argue was going a bit easy.) Still, why not just go on
& on about how appalling the show was, even though Nellie
has seen nil, & John about 3 minutes worth of episode 1,
apparently? Rule Of Three, guys. Curiously, there followed a
dicussion about how awful Fox News is, never letting the facts get
in the way of good propaganda etc etc. Disclaimer: I have no
association with ‘Rake’ at all, I’m just a viewer who is relieved
to see that Australians can actually make good TV, even if it is
only about once every 10 years. I also think Fox News is shitful
evil nonsense, for the record. Merry Christmas.

I was responding to a question about the situation on Rake as reported to me, and sometimes we raise issues about shows we haven’t all been able to see (it’s kind of inevitable with 4 hosts) but fair o’nuff. You raise a valid point and I’ll try to watch the Rake in question and report on it again.

Sophie? Why am I now a Kiwi? Happy to be, I’m just mussing why???

By the way, I heartily apologize to all BC listeners for my one thing. The carols were awful.

At the risk of dragging up the old argument about “Is the 11th Doctor a new character or an existing character?”, I’ve gotta say I favourite NEW character for 2010 was The Doctor. Like John, this season has been the first “NuWho” season that I’ve really enjoyed. It’s also been the first new season that I have handed over to a total non-fan and said, “Have a look, it really is good.”

Why? I guess David Tennant just never did it for me. Christopher Ecclestone was great, but the series was still trying to find its feet, so it was a little unbalanced. During the Tennant years I still watched (because, after all, it was Doctor Who), but I rarely went back for a second viewing. And don’t get me started on “DoctorHobbitJesus”.
For me, RTD’s writing style was big on bluster and set pieces and soap.
Steven Moffat’s style is focussed on the wordplay and personality and how people really relate.

RTD’s main emotion was love.
Moffat’s main emotion is fear.
And fear is what Doctor Who is about.

Biggest disappointment on TV for the year for me was the Lost finale. Six years of setting up the realism of these people, the island, the organisations and the faction fighting, and then suddenly going all mystical and saying “It’s all about your soul” in the finale was naff. I was happily going along with the story up until the final scenes, accepting the back stories of Jacob and the MIB, that was fine. I was interested in the alternate timeline storyline too. But to drop everything, all the questions that had been set up over the years, give no closure to the mysteries that were the crux of the show’s popularity was bullshit.

I’m not sure if it counts in the 2010 year, but the Biggest Disappointment in Boxcutters for the year has gotta be the Pitch Competition. I’ve said it before, but I really was looking forward to hearing some constructive discussion on what the Boxcutting community thought would make good TV. Where does the magic lie in great shows? Which aspects of people’s pitch-wheat separate it from the existing-fare-chaff?

Best news for 2010 is John getting “Outland” filmed. Congrats John. Can’t wait to see the finished version.